


Family supports you: A weak structure collapses.

by Anihan (Nakagami)



Series: A Year of Fiction [2]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Child's POV, Diary/Journal, Everyone's trying to be a good person and everyone thinks they've failed :(, Gen, Gender swaps, Mental Health Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-28
Updated: 2013-06-22
Packaged: 2017-12-15 18:27:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,264
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/852673
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nakagami/pseuds/Anihan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mycroft suggests Sherlock write a journal. Sherlock being Sherlock, she writes in the margins of textbooks instead. </p>
<p>This is Sherlock's diary over the year of her twelfth birthday. On the outside, little has changed. On the inside, little is the same.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. in the margins of a textbook

_A young girl is lying lengthwise along the top of a bookshelf, knees right at the edge. Her feet face the ceiling. It is her birthday and her present, the only one that matters, lies open on the wood in front of her._

_It is a textbook._ Bumblebee Economics _by Bernd Heinrich, 1979. The girl is concentrating fiercely and she brandishes a new pen - red, because she can - in her writing hand._

_Mycroft finds the textbook in the early '90s.  
_

*

There's a writing challenge that I have taken up. It involves writing one journal entry twice a month for a full year. Mycroft thinks that this will get me interested in talking again. I haven't spoken much since father left for a business trip two weeks ago. I think it's a good idea even if Mycroft's reasons are selfish.

I like writing in the margins of textbooks. Having a diary is like having a target, but no one reads these books but Mycroft, Mummy, and myself. I am careful to choose the books Mummy has memorised, books that Mycroft has no interest in, so my thoughts are safe here. For My Eyes Only. 

I have a whole library to choose from. My method is freeing.

*

I imagine that life must be different for all of the Sherlocks born male. I imagine that it would not have been a similar childhood at all. Misogyny, for one, would not have posed quite the same difficulties as it has for me.

"Really, Eternia! Do you give both of your daughters free reign of the household? The elder has made something of herself, but _this_ one! It is truly indecent how often that girl has her nose in a book. Has she learned anything at all?" 

Oh, if only she knew that her words were being immortalized here. It'd serve her right. Immortalized forever as being a right mean old lady. 

'Eternia', who was a proper lady, didn't roll her eyes or contradict her sister-in-law. "Of course she has, Maude. She can read, can't she?" 

I do so love my mother. 

*

"Can she cook?" Maude asked, nose upturned. 

She didn't ask me; I would have told her I could. Of course I can. Cooking is just applied chemistry, is it not? My superior time management skills and attention to detail would ensure an edible product at the end. I merely choose not to do so. 

Aunt Maude had not asked me. She had asked Mummy, and Mummy had laughed in her face. 

(She later told me it was a rude thing to do; but that finally being able to be rude to one's in-laws was one of the few true advantages of finalising a marriage.) 

*

"Can she even do kitchen maths?" 

Again, a proper lady doesn't roll her eyes. Mummy gave the impression that she was anyway. "Could she do chemistry without a firm grasp on measurements, weights, and mathematical principles?" 

"You let her do chemistry?"

Mummy raised an elegant eyebrow like she had taught Mycroft and I to do when we were being politely facetious. Perhaps Aunt Maude had forgotten that Mummy was a chemist. She placed the teacup back on the saucer and said, as if with surprise, _"Let?"_  

The old bag floundered for a moment before saying, "Yes, well," and leaving it at that. 

But Mummy wouldn't let that lie. She doesn't leave arguments unfinished. Mummy stood and paced over to the door to call a maid. "Would you fetch my youngest from her bedroom? It is time for her weekly lesson." 

I hastened from my hiding spot in time to meet the maid at the door to my room. I wrote the rest of this later as there was no time before I was due downstairs. 

I was snapped at as soon as I entered the parlor. "What took you so long? And where's your dress?" Maude asked, triumphant, as if catching me in trousers were a sin. She really was a mean old hag. "You're hardly decent, going about like that!" 

"I wasn't going about like this," I protested, or something similar along the same lines. I may not have been quite as polite. "I have merely chosen safety and comfort over catching my petticoats on fire and burning the house down." 

Aunt Maude's face grew livid. I ducked away. 

Mummy talked her down while I gathered the tea fixings from the maid and poured for the three of us. She looked surprised when she was calmly nibbling a biscuit ten minutes later. Perhaps Aunt Maude had forgotten that Mummy was a diplomat as well. She was equally surprised when both occupations were expressed in the following half hour. 

I learned how to use silver nitrate that day. Aunt Maude didn't approve of that either. 

*

"Can't she even--" Maude begins, and each time I try to tune her out. Each time, I fail. Cook, clean, draw a bath or make a bed, mend or weave, sew, embroider-- 

"Can't she even stay out from underfoot?" Maude asked for last time. 

It didn't hurt for her to say those things about me. It didn't hurt to hear them said. It didn't hurt me. Even if I am a bad liar. 

"Can you?" Mummy asked, and my chest felt angry even as my head felt sad. Or maybe I got those backward. Mycroft always tells me that my interpretations are a little off, that it makes me act quite odd. I never learned another way to interpret my senses so, logically, I am still an odd-acting one. How else was I meant to be? I looked up and what I saw made my breath whoosh right back out again. 

Mummy wasn't asking me. She was asking Aunt Maude. 

I felt relief all over then. I don't know why. 

*

I got kicked out of school today. 

*

That was only the first time.

*

Aunt Maude was going to stop telling Mummy when she was disappointed with my progress as a lady. I imagine Mummy had stopped giving a fuck about her opinion ages before that. 

That's what their argument boiled down to, at any rate. 

*

Aunt Maude is concerned that something is wrong with me. 

Mummy doesn't say it but I know she agrees. 

*

These words are not reenactments unless stated as such: These are direct quotes that I have written as soon as they were spoken. 

From this I can tell you with utter certainty - and with ample evidence - that I have never enjoyed my Aunt Maude's particular brand of familial responsibility. She chose to move in with us, to "help out" while her brother is out of the country. 

It has only ever served to remind me that she is a giant twit. 

* 

Perhaps I should get a real Journal. Aunt Maude has taken four of my textbooks already this week. How am I meant to perform a diachronic self-study if she continues to confiscate my notes?

*

They are calling me difficult to work with, difficult to understand on an emotional level. I've been given a shrink. 

I don't think I like her. She says I don't connect well with anyone but I know that is not true. It isn't that I don't connect with people: it is only that I refuse to connect with someone who would ignore the child's wish to remain clear-headed just because drugging the child is the fastest solution and fast and easy-to-maintain would produce a fatter paycheck. 

No one but Mycroft has told me what I've done wrong. She's not always here when I make a mistake but she let's me know when it happens. Why does the rest of my family make me wonder?

*

I don't think we need money anyway. It destroys morals. I don't think we need another excuse to treat each other badly. I'd rather be homeless and trustworthy on the streets than live like a prince with my soul in the gutter. I don't need to be drugged to be liked there.

*

I don't like my Journal entries when I am on the drugs. I read them over later and I don't recognise the words. 

*

Mycroft found me under a bridge near Pendleton. I did not tell her why I ran away but the shrink was gone when I got back. I think she already knew.

*

Aunt Maude wasn't happy about my disappearance. She locked the door to the library and would not open it once I got back. 

Mycroft never told her that I pick locks. I baked her muffins as positive reinforcement. Aunt Maude approved of that, at least.

*

I found Mycroft's prescription bottle in the bins out back when I was looking for something to burn. I didn't know. Plastic doesn't burn fast and the paper on the outside burned slowly enough for me to memorize the prescription before the label had been consumed. 

I just didn't know. 

*

Aunt Maude found out that I was writing in the books. She went through all of the ones she could find and took them into her room. 

"You'll get them back when you're older and have learned to respect property." 

*

I won't get them back. I found paper and leather ash samples in the fire grate in Maude's rooms. 

Why would she do that to me? She promised to return them; I meant to steal them back last night but I found evidence of their destruction instead.

Why did she feel the need to lie?

*

I don't have trust issues. This new shrink is wrong too. I don't have trust issues: I have an untrustworthy family. 

*

I take it back. Mycroft is letting me use the textbooks in her room for my notes and is claiming them as her own. She is trustworthy. And Mummy fired the last shrink after the man made me have nightmares. She's trustworthy too. 

They are the only ones. 

*

Something has gone terribly wrong. Maude says it all the time. She's moving out at the end of the winter. At long last. But Mummy has said it now, too.

I've been kicked out of school again for 'anti-social behavior'. They told her, "Something must have gone wrong while you were raising her," and Mummy merely nodded in agreement and led me from the room. Then Maude said she was moving out and Mummy didn't protest then either.

She doesn't smile much anymore. Father hasn't been home in forever. Maybe that is what is wrong?

*

Everyone seems to think it is true. Mycroft said it last, but the ache was made worse by the finality of her phrasing: "We did wrong." 

She said it as if she didn't think we could fix it. As if it could not be fixed. But they were talking about me, weren't they? So what were they trying to fix?

*


	2. Final Entry

I think I made a mistake when I made the claim that a Sherlock who was born male would have had a different sort of childhood. I think I was very wrong. 

My first premise was incorrect. It wasn't my gender that made Maude hate me. It was me. It was always me. I couldn't have followed Maude's idea of a proper lady any more than I could have followed her idea of a proper lad. I wasn't meant to be a proper child at all. 

This is my twenty-fourth and final entry, although I am writing this a few weeks late. (Sixteen, to be precise. At the time of writing it is already nearing summer and I am thirteen.) I am glad that it is over now. I have learned something in this time that I would like to share. I began my twelfth year of life thinking I was a little different, a little strange. I ended that year knowing that that is irrevocably true. I **feel** like this completes the cycle. However, as John tells me, "If proper were the only way to be, no one would make note of it. And people make note of people like us." 

She is right. We are note-worthy precisely because we are not proper ladies. I have only met her today but I do believe that she intends to make a thing of this. She's moving in tomorrow, I can **feel** it.

Mycroft says it isn't proper to move in with someone the day you meet. She says nothing about our ages and that is the only reason I still trust her opinion. Not that I would follow it anyway. John is convenient and loyal, and I do need a flatmate. A companion. Someone.

It also isn't proper to kiss someone you barely know. Being unconscious for the first half of CPR didn't make me any less glad to see John's face when I came to. Mummy would call this common sense but I like to think we both enjoyed it.

John says it isn't proper to sing on the streets at midnight, and she's the one to start the first round.

It isn't proper to giggle, laugh, or enjoy being at a crime scene, is it? Although I suppose it is only natural for our first date to take place in such a venue. It really was a busy day.

But what I have learned today is that there is truly a lot that I don't know. Most of it is rubbish but some information I do not possess is vital. For instance, is it proper to fall in love this easily? And beyond proper, is it normal?

I do not know the answers to those questions, but I hope not. I truly do. 


End file.
